“Some people’s affability is more deadly than the violence of coarser souls.”

To let the brain work without sufficient material is like racing an engine. It racks itself to pieces.

Life, it turns out, is infinitely more clever and adaptable than anyone had ever supposed.

We can’t command our love, but we can our actions.

I have frequently gained my first real insight into the character of parents by studying their children.

The game is afoot.

Women are naturally secretive, and they like to do their own secreting.

There are heroisms all round us waiting to be done.

Art in the blood is liable to take the strangest forms.

There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as in religion.

Anything is better than stagnation.

Any truth is better than indefinite doubt.

Circumstantial evidence is a very tricky thing. It may seem to point very straight to one thing, but if you shift your own point of view a little, you may find it pointing in an equally uncompromising manner to something entirely different.

There are always some lunatics about. It would be a dull world without them.

One must wait till it comes.

It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but that you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it.

Healthy scepticism is the basis of all accurate observation.

The minute that you’re not learning I believe you’re dead.

Luxury is more deadly than any foe.

I need solitude for my writing; not ‘like a hermit’ – that wouldn’t be enough – but like a dead man.

It doesn’t make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone who’s dead.

Jazz isn’t dead. It just smells funny.

Changes are important they are like the rain who washes away dead flowers to make space for new ones.

Sadness that is caused by the absence of love is deadly for the heart.

Oh darling, if the universe would need the love of us careless humans to keep its restless heart alive the sky would be full of dead stars.